Education Week -- Quality Counts -- 2002 Report

Most Americans think education begins at age 5—with kindergarten.

But children are learning from the moment they're born. And for millions of youngsters, the reality is that their early learning is a joint enterprise between parents and early-childhood educators.

State interest in early learning is growing, but large gaps in access and quality remain.

Today, 11.9 million children younger than 5 in the United States—or about six in 10—spend part of their waking hours in the care of people other than their parents: relatives, caregivers operating out of their homes, workers in child-care centers, Head Start staff members, and teachers in state-financed prekindergartens among them. The quality of the early care and education that young children receive in such settings sets the tenor of their days and lays the building blocks for future academic success.

Studies conclude that early-childhood education makes a difference. Young children exposed to high-quality settings exhibit better language and mathematics skills, better cognitive and social skills, and better relationships with classmates than do children in lower-quality care. Evaluations of well-run early-learning programs also have found that children in those environments were less likely to drop out of school, repeat grades, need special education, or get into future trouble with the law than similar children who did not have such exposure.

Quality Counts 2002: Building Blocks for Success examines what states are doing to provide early-learning experiences for young children; to ensure that those experiences are of high quality; to prepare and pay early-childhood educators adequately; and to measure the results of early-childhood programs. The report also examines states' commitment to kindergarten, the transition point into the formal public education system. The report is based on the premise that when it comes to early learning, quality counts, just as it does in K-12 education.

Increasingly, states are getting that message. Today, every state subsidizes kindergarten in at least some districts or for a portion of the school day, according to a survey conducted by Education Week for Quality Counts. Twenty-five states pay for kindergarten for the full school day, at least in districts that opt to offer such services. So does the District of Columbia.

But nine states—Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania—still do not require districts to offer kindergarten.

Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia provide state-financed prekindergarten for at least some of their 3- to 5-year-olds, up from about 10 in 1980. Annual state spending for such programs now exceeds $1.9 billion.

Increasingly, states are getting the message that when it comes to early learning, quality is just as important as in K-12 education.

In 2000, 21 states and the District of Columbia supplemented federal aid to serve additional children through Head Start, one of the nation's largest preschool programs for disadvantaged 3- to 5-year-olds. Thirty-one states underwrite one or more programs for infants and toddlers, up from 24 in 1998. Thirty-one states underwrite one or more programs for infants and toddlers, up from 24 in 1998.

In addition, every state helps at least some low-income families buy child care through a combination of state and federal money under the Child Care and Development Fund block grant and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.Twenty-six states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government also help families pay for child care through tax credits or deductions. But only 10 states made the credits refundable in the 2001 tax year so that the lowest-income families could benefit. Twenty-six states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government also help families pay for child care through tax credits or deductions. But only 10 states made the credits refundable in the 2001 tax year so that the lowest-income families could benefit.

Despite federal and state efforts, access to high-quality early-childhood education remains out of the reach of many families. None of the federal programs reaches more than a fraction of the newborns to 5-year-olds who could benefit from such services. And states' financial commitment to early-childhood education varies widely, as do eligibility requirements and the number of children who actually receive services.

Families with low incomes, particularly the working poor, have the least access to high-quality early-childhood services.

Most states focus their prekindergarten efforts on the neediest youngsters. Twenty-six target children from low-income families; 15 of those also look at other risk factors, such as having a teenage parent. And nine states leave it up to local districts to determine which risk factors they will consider.

Only three states—Georgia, New York, and Oklahoma—and the District of Columbia are phasing in prekindergarten for any 4-year-old whose parent wants it, regardless of income.

Similarly, although all states provide child-care subsidies for at least some poor families, wide variations exist in the income limits that families must meet to qualify, the actual dollar amount of the subsidies, and the percentage of eligible children served.

Families with low incomes, particularly the working poor, have the least access to high-quality early-childhood services.

Traditionally, "quality" in early-childhood education has meant ensuring that children are cared for in a safe and nurturing environment. State licensing standards commonly address group size, the number of children per caregiver, and such physical features as the height of playground equipment. Licensing standards rarely, if ever, address the learning aspects of early care and education.

Even those minimal protections often fail to safeguard children adequately. In many states, certain settings are exempt from licensure entirely: family child-care homes that serve a small number of children, preschools that operate only a few hours a day, or sites run by religious organizations.

New research on the importance of early learning has led some states to describe the quality of instruction that should occur in preschool settings.

New research about the importance of early learning, however, has led some states to describe the quality of instruction that should occur in preschool settings, at least for programs that receive state money. While almost all states have standards for students in elementary school, only 19 states and the District of Columbia lay out specific expectations for kindergartners. Fifteen states and the District have specific standards for prekindergarten. Five more states are working on such standards. Only six states—California, Connectictut, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, and Washington—require preschool programs to adhere to the standards. In addition, seven states require their state-financed prekindergartens to satisfy federal Head Start standards.

States also are mounting efforts to improve the quality of early-childhood programs. Seven require their prekindergarten programs to earn accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia offer tiered reimbursement rates that provide higher child-care subsidies to providers that earn national accreditation or meet other quality criteria.

But states still have a long way to go to ensure that those who work with young children are well-educated and well-compensated.

As a nation, the United States pays about as much to parking-lot attendants and dry-cleaning workers as it does to early-childhood educators, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average annual salary of child-care workers in 1999 was $15,430. Preschool teachers, who typically work with 3- to 5-year-olds, had annual salaries of $19,610, less than half what the average elementary school teacher earned.

States have a long way to go to ensure that those who work with young children are well-educated and well-compensated.

Not surprisingly, given those numbers, turnover among early-childhood workers is high, and education requirements are minimal. Every state, for example, requires kindergarten teachers to have at least a bachelor's degree and a certificate in elementary or early-childhood education. But only 20 states and the District of Columbia require teachers in state-financed prekindergartens to meet similar requirements. In 30 states, teachers in child-care centers can begin work without having any preservice training.

Recently, states and the federal government have begun to get more serious about the preparation of early-childhood educators.

Congress has ordered that by 2003, 50 percent of a Head Start program's teachers must have an associate's degree in early-childhood education. A growing number of states also have initiatives either to help providers acquire more education or to supplement their wages. The TEACH Early Childhood Project, which began in North Carolina in 1990, provides scholarships to child-care workers to attend school and bonuses or raises from their employers when they complete their programs of study. Seventeen additional states have since adopted the program. Nine states have programs to improve the compensation of early-childhood educators.

Many believe that the continued push for better academic performance in the elementary years could compel states to pay more attention to early learning for for years to come.

States' growing investments in the early years, and their concerns about school readiness, also have led them to revisit the question of how to measure the success or failure of their early-childhood initiatives. Today, 17 states mandate readiness testing of kindergartners as a first step in identifying children with special needs or to help plan instruction. Six states use kindergarten testing to gauge school readiness statewide. Fifteen states and the District of Columbia require diagnostic or developmental testing of prekindergartners. At the federal level, new performance measures are being used to evaluate Head Start programs, including their impact on children's math and literacy skills.

Efforts also are under way to rethink how states pay for early care and education. Many states, for instance, are seeking new sources of money to support their efforts, such as beer and cigarette taxes or state lottery proceeds.

Despite the economic downturn, many believe that the continued push for better academic performance in the elementary years could well compel states to pay more attention to early learning for years to come.

This year's edition of Quality Counts also charts the progress in other facets of educational improvement in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. In addition to presenting the latest data on student achievement, it grades the states in three areas: standards and accountability, efforts to improve teacher quality, and resources (adequacy and equity). This year, states averaged a C across those categories. Quality Counts also includes indicators on school climate, but does not grade states in that category this year because the indicators are being revised. Additional ungraded indicators are reported only in the Web edition.

Quality Counts 2002 is divided into three sections. "The Essential Elements" examines what it would take for states to build a system of early-childhood education, the theme of this year's report. "Early-Childhood Policies" tracks state policies and indicators related to the theme. "The State of the States" includes more than 80 indicators of the health of each state's public education system. State-by-state updates summarize state policy changes in education over the past year.

—The Editors

Quality Counts is produced with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

At first glance, the tables, charts, and statistics on early childhood in Quality Counts 2002: Building Blocks for Success suggest that a vast array of information is available about the care and education of preschool-age children in the United States. But appearances can be deceiving.

One of the most startling findings of this year's report is how little is actually known about the care of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers—children in a period that some have called the "black hole" before entry into the formal public education system.

The tables that follow (click on table titles in the box above, right) feature the best information available from some of the most comprehensive sources of data on young children.

In addition to information about early-childhood programs from Education Week's annual, 50-state survey, the tables include data collected by: the Washington-based Children's Defense Fund, the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, the National Center for Early Development and Learning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Washington-based National Association for the Education of Young Children, the Washington-based Children's Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. All those groups and institutions were generous in sharing their findings with Quality Counts.

The indicators on program access, funding, standards, teacher quality, and early-childhood assessment provide some details on the programs and policies states have in place for kindergartners and preschoolers, including how many children are served and how much money states are devoting to various early-childhood initiatives.

But the data only begin to shed light on what may be important discrepancies in quality across the various types of early- childhood programs. They also raise serious concerns about the access that families have to early-childhood services in the United States and the adequacy of those services.

Access and Funding: An Uneven Picture

The Education Week survey found that every state provides at least some funding for kindergarten, and 41 states require districts to offer kindergarten, as does the District of Columbia. But only eight states and the District of Columbia require that kindergarten be offered for the full school day. And only 13 states and the District require 5-year-olds to attend. Approximately 3.4 million youngsters attended kindergarten in the United States in 2000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

One of the most startling findings is how little is actually known about the care of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

By updating existing data collected by the National Center on Early Development and Learning, the Children's Defense Fund, the National Center for Children in Poverty, and the Yale University Child Study Center, Education Week also pieced together a picture of preschool and prekindergarten efforts across the states. Today, 39 states and the District of Columbia use state money to support prekindergarten programs. But the characteristics of those programs vary widely.

A few states—Georgia, New York, and Oklahoma—are phasing in prekindergarten statewide for any 4-year-old whose parents want it, regardless of parental income. Other states— such as Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Texas— are paying for large-scale initiatives aimed at reaching as many 4- year-olds as possible, especially those from poor families.

Meanwhile, states such as Alabama, Colorado, and Iowa are piloting pre-K programs or are providing financial support to help local community groups collaborate in expanding early-childhood services.

Some states, including Ohio and Oregon, have focused their prekindergarten efforts on expanding Head Start or have modeled their own state programs after the federal initiative for disadvantaged preschoolers. Ohio alone spent about $100 million in state money to expand Head Start programs in 2001.

Still other states—Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania among them—are spending substantial state dollars on block grants that may be used for prekindergarten as well as other early-childhood priorities identified by local communities.

In all, states are spending more than $1.9 billion annually to help more than 765,000 children attend prekindergarten.

In addition to state-financed prekindergarten efforts, several states have launched programs to increase access to high-quality child care. North Carolina's Smart Start, for example, is spending $210 million during the current fiscal year to reimburse child-care providers; provide subsidies, health care, and family-support services to low- income families; and promote quality. South Carolina's $39 million First Steps initiative and Rhode Island's $67 million Starting RIght effort follow a similar model.

In 2000, states also received some $4.5 billion for Head Start from the federal government and served more than 760,000 poor children. That year, 21 states and the District of Columbia supplemented the federal support with $185 million in state funds, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty.

On the child-care front, two new reports—"A Fragile Foundation," by the Children's Defense Fund, and "The Impact of Funding on State Child Care Subsidy Programs," by the Washington- based Center for Law and Social Policy—provide some of the most detailed data available on state child-care policies. The reports include information on how states are using money from the federal Child Care and Development Fund and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grants to increase families' access to child care.

In total, states received $4.4 billion in CCDF aid in fiscal 2001. They also transferred an average of 14 percent of their $24 billion TANF allocation in 2000 to the CCDF for child-care purposes.

States' increasing use of federal welfare dollars to help finance child-care options for needy families is striking. While just eight states transferred a percentage of their TANF funds to the CCDF in 1997, 44 states did so in 2000. And while only seven states spent a portion of their TANF money directly on child care in 1997, 35 states did so by 2000.

Limited Data

But beyond those broad outlines of the "system" of early care and education in the United States, we quickly reach the limits of what we know.

For example, although we know the number of children receiving child-care subsidies each month and the number served through state-supported prekindergarten initiatives, we don't know what proportion of eligible children those figures represent in each state.

We also lack the data to quantify the gap between families' needs for early-childhood education in each state and the existing capacity of prekindergarten and early- childhood-care providers.

What data we do have suggest a mismatch between the supply and demand for child-care services. A study released by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2000 showed that only about 12 percent of the 15 million children eligible for federal child-care subsidies actually received assistance.

According to the Children's Defense Fund, in 19 states, a family of three earning as little as $25,000 in 2000 could not qualify for child-care aid. Seventeen states had waiting lists that year or had frozen the intake of low-income families into their subsidy systems.

We know even less about the situation for prekindergarten programs. While Kentucky guarantees prekindergarten for any needy child whose parents want it, for example, the number of children served in such programs varies widely across the states—from a low of 500 children in Nebraska's Early Childhood Projects to almost 149,000 in Texas's State Pre-K program.

Quality: The Missing Piece

What we know about the quality of the prekindergarten and child-care services that young children receive is even more limited.

The information featured in our tables suggests that, at best, there is great unevenness in the quality of early-childhood settings— especially when the standards and expectations for prekindergarten and child-care providers are stacked up against those for kindergarten.

For example, all 50 states and the District of Columbia require kindergarten teachers to obtain a bachelor's degree to become licensed; and 16 states and the District require kindergarten teachers to take early-childhood courses or to obtain specific early-childhood certification to work with kindergartners.

By comparison, only 20 states and the District of Columbia require prekindergarten teachers to be graduates of four-year colleges. Just one state—Rhode Island—requires teachers in child-care centers to have a bachelor's degree. New Jersey mandates a bachelor's degree for supervisors in child-care centers. In 30 states, adults can begin caring for young children in child-care centers with no prior educational training beyond high school graduation.

In contrast, Head Start's program standards require that by 2003, at least 50 percent of teachers in Head Start centers must have at least an associate's degree. Those teachers who do not have an associate's degree must, at minimum, obtain a Child Development Associate credential, or CDA, which is awarded by the Council for Early Childhood Professional Recognition.

If pay is any indication, child- care centers have a difficult challenge in attracting and keeping a well-qualified workforce. Low salaries have long been a subject of concern in K-12 education. But the salaries for kindergarten teachers, which averaged $36,770 in 1999, appear generous compared with those for prekindergarten and child-care educators.

Nationwide, child-care workers earned an average of $15,430 in 1999. Self-identified prekindergarten teachers, a category that includes some teachers in child-care centers, fared only slightly better, at $19,610 a year.

Expectations for young children are limited. While almost all states have standards for students in the early elementary school years, only 19 states and the District of Columbia lay out specific expectations for kindergartners. Fifteen states and the District have specific standards for prekindergarten. Five more states are drafting such standards. But only six states—California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, and Washington—require that preschool programs adhere to the standards.

But no state has included content requirements for child care as part of its licensing system for child-care providers.

Just seven states require that state- subsidized prekindergarten programs meet national accreditation standards to operate. Twenty states have no regulations for the maximum group size of child-care centers, and 18 do not regulate child-care providers who care for up to four children.

To improve quality, 26 states and the District of Columbia have established "tiered" reimbursement systems as part of their child-care subsidies. Under such programs, child-care providers who meet quality criteria specified by the state are eligible for higher subsidies for eligible children than the state normally provides. While some studies suggest such policies are encouraging providers to enhance their child-care offerings, it is unclear how big an impact the policies are having.

The Children's Defense Fund reports that the differential reimbursements range from a low of an additional $11 a month per child in West Virginia to an extra $127 a month per child in New York state.

One thing is clear: With more and more children being cared for outside the home before they reach school age, and mounting evidence about the importance of early-childhood education for later school success, much more needs to be known about this vital time in children's development.

If Americans are serious that quality counts in education, advocates for early-childhood care and learning stress, then quality should be just as important before a child's fifth birthday as after.